A full house was on hand for the opening weekend of Dreamweavers’ 2007 season. Neil Simon’s delicately crafted “Prisoner of Second Avenue” was on the bill.

I say, “delicately crafted,” because this was a story of time, a place and a man nearing a nervous breakdown, almost a prisoner in his own apartment in New York, in 1972.  This, you may recall, was the time of the Vietnam war, of Watergate and daily protest marches on city streets. It was also a time when crime was reaching all-time highs. The crime I know a bit about because I was there.

“Prisoner” is about Mel Edison and his faithful, caring wife, Edna — roles played brilliantly by Trevor Wright and Krisi Pilkington. Mel is on his way to a total nervous collapse, and unknown to Edna for four long days, he’s kept a final blow a secret: Mel, with 42 other employees, are out of jobs as his firm is downsizing and moving out of “Crime City.”

In Act I, we find the couple in their 14th floor apartment on Second Avenue and 88th Street in the upscale area of Manhattan known as Yorkville. He rambles around the apartment in a robe and, between bouts with angry neighbors and listening to local news broadcasts on the radio, the news — and Mel — goes from bad to worse.

The poor man becomes grimmer and more out of it each passing day, and suddenly, he imagines that there is a plot out there to extinguish the working class, and Edna fears for her poor husband’s sanity.

Out of desperation, Edna contacts Mel’s family — three older sisters and an older brother — and tells them that their baby brother, a 47-year-old unemployed man, needs help and needs it fast.

Enter his siblings: sisters Jessie, Pearl and Pauline and his older brother, Harry. Gail Silverman, Rose Marie Sweeney, Jeanne Maxwell and Arthur Goulart are just right in their roles, and with Mel out of the apartment, his sisters (not his brother) remind Edna that she hasn’t invited them over in nine years. Edna ignores the remarks and tells it like it is and speaks of the need to pay doctors bills.

The scene in which Harry, a decent and intelligent man, tries to get his sisters to contribute to the X Factor by way of steps A and B to clear up their brother’s debts is worth the price of admission. The sisters aren’t concerned with steps A and B, but are deathly afraid of the X Factor, which, in plain English, is how much money they’re willing to jack up to ease their brother’s pain (debts).

In the closing scene, big brother Harry, on his own, rings Mel’s apartment door bell and somehow, even though kid brother and his wife have also become victims of a burglary, Mel is clean-shaven, clear of eye and rational once more.

Harry hugs kid brother and hands him a check for a considerable amount of money (Harry’s). What Mel does with that check is yours to find out, but I’ve got a hunch better days are ahead for Mel and Edna.

Wright and Arthur played that final scene beautifully, so hats off to them and to Pilkington, Silverman, Sweeney, Maxwell and director Julia L. Glattfelt, as well as Patte Quinn, stage manager.

Only one point of constructive criticism is offered, for what it’s worth. The radio in Mel and Edna’s apartment announcing local spot news brought to the audience by the offstage voices of Joe Lewis and Jerry Glattfelt was a nice Neil Simon touch. But could someone turn up the volume? Try as I might, I could not hear most of that spot news, except for one fictitious news bulletin announcing the kidnapping of the NYPD’s police commisioner. Had that actually happened, NYPD could have gotten along quite nicely. Such were the times we lived in.

So thanks, Dreamweavers, for a wonderful evening, and theater-lovers can enjoy a performance on the next two weekends, Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. or Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. The show’s final performance is on Jan. 28. Dreamweavers is at 1637 Imola Ave. in the rear of Riverpark Shopping Center. For tickets and information, call 255-LIVE (255-5483) or www.dreamweaverstheatre.org.